TIRUPATI: TIRUMALA Tirupati Devasthanams chairman DK Audikesvaulu Naidu, whose two-year term ended today, claimed that the TTD trust board had succeeded in allotting more time to common pilgrims for darshan.
Participating in a ‘Meet the Press’ at the Press Club here, he said ‘Sheeghra Darashn’, which was introduced last year, wiped out at one stroke the dalaris (middlemen). Replacing the earlier Archanaanantara Darasanam and Cellar Darsanam tickets, which were issued mostly on recommendations, proved to be a boon to the pilgrims, he said adding “We brought down the number of tickets issued against recommendations, under discretionary quota to a mere 2,000, i.e., 2 to 3 percent of the total number of people having darshan daily as against about 10,000 15,000 earlier, which is a remarkable achievement’.
Further, the tickets under the discretionary quota were being issued only to cater to protocol norms, VVIPs and recommendations of people’s representatives, higher officials, board members and others, he said.
“There is very little scope for misuse of the tickets issued under the quota and the reports of irregularities in the issue of tickets is much exaggerated and far from truth as we strictly followed the guidelines.’’
Listing out the steps taken by his trust board for common pilgrims, he said that milk, coffee, snacks etc. were supplied round the clock to the pilgrims waiting in Vaikuntam queue complex and efforts were on to develop a big dairy at Palamaner for enhanced supply of milk to SVBC.
He said that as chairman he felt that it was not proper to single out only three members, who were accused of seva ticket booking scam, and wanted the government to probe against trust board members from 2006.
